In eleven days, we will have a night of worship and release our album down here in Fort Lauderdale. It will be a special night in a lot of ways. For me, it will be the culmination of three hard and wonderful years of ministry as well as the fruit of many more years of songwriting. What These Songs Have Meant to Us Julie Anne Vargas and I set out a year and a half ago to begin writing a … Read More
New Music Roundup – Early 2015
The landscape of great worship music continues to broaden and deepen. Styles continue to diverge, and I’m finding that lyrical depth is increasing on many fronts. This is all very encouraging. This post rounds up the first half, but check back later this week for the rest of the roundup. Citizens & Saints, Join the Triumph I am man-crushing all over this album. Citizens & Saints, along with Dustin Kensrue, are cutting their own path. What I love most about … Read More
Come and Make Us Free EP – RELEASES TODAY
Cages. We’re well pedigreed engineers of them. We construct them, we think, for comfort. We believe they will save us, either by protecting us from the cruel blows of the world or by protecting the world from us. They keep the world in check, or they keep us in check. Either way, they are wrought-ironed evidence of humanity’s slavery to self-salvation, self-justification. Riffing on Calvin: the human heart is a cage factory, skillfully engineering ten thousand self-made prisons. Come and … Read More
What a New Jesus Culture Album Teaches Us About Worship
Justin Jarvis, Atmospheres I’ve been listening to the newest album under the Jesus Culture umbrella, called Atmospheres. It’s by my friend and fellow local Ft. Lauderdale worship leader, Justin Jarvis. We’ve shared coffee and way too large piles of pastrami at a local hole-in-the-wall. Atmospheres is an incredible live album with an amazing sound and overwhelming moments where great truth profoundly collides with raw experience. There are several songs that paint new, imaginative pictures of old, timeless truths, like “Taste” … Read More
Album Roundup – The First Half of 2014
Because I’ve waited so long, the list is pretty long. A whole slew of great albums have hit the scene since early 2014, and I’d like to bring your attention to the ones that are pretty special! In no particular order… Zach Sprowls, Everlasting Arms, May 2014 A peppy twist on “O for a Thousand Tongues” and a meaningful retune of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” make this a wonderful hymn collection, plus some original material. Zach is a thoughtful, … Read More
Review of No Other Name, by Hillsong Worship
Hillsong Worship, No Other Name (Live)(Hillsong Music)Released: July 1, 2014 As Hillsong continues to put out Western-worship-influencing album after album at an amazingly rapid rate, I am reminded of what seems to have been Charles Wesley’s (intentional or unintentional) principle of influence: put out a lot of material, and the handful of songs that are supposed to stand the test of time will. I admire this about the vision of Hillsong’s now quite diversified worship offerings. As with most of my … Read More
Just Some Indie Electro-Pop Neo-Anglican Meditations on the Great Litany, that’s all
I am currently listening to an impossible sound. It’s a beautiful collision of two things that don’t normally go together: liturgy and pop-electronica. Charles Wesley would probably have no categories to what has been done with his “Hymns for Our Lord’s Resurrection” from 1746. In it is a nine-stanza hymn, “Jesus Show Us Thy Salvation,” which Cardiphonia describes as Wesley’s riff on the lengthy Anglican prayer, The Great Litany. Cardiphonia has chosen to set each stanza apart in its own … Read More
Album Roundup: Kristen Gilles, Sovereign Grace, Summit Worship
Spring is evidently the season for killer new worship projects… Kristen Gilles, Parker’s Mercy Brigade Sometimes, in the circles I float in, we can do a lot of “musical theology” in the realm of abstraction. But Kristen’s new album is far from abstract. Parker’s Mercy Brigade is a psalmbook-like collection of tunes, largely dedicated to processing a very real period of suffering in Kristin and Bobby’s life. This album is what it looks like when sufferers honestly and faithfully sing their … Read More
Album Roundup: Songs from the Book of Ephesians, The Journey Collective
I’m very, very excited about this collaborative project from the folks at The Journey Church in St. Louis. First off, I’m excited to see more projects like this–whole albums centered around books of the Bible. We saw this with the Gospel Coalition’s wonderful Luke album and with Sovereign Grace’s killer Romans album. And now we’ve got some Ephesians-based material! Beauty! Musicality/Production The production on this album is polished and inspiring. To my ear, many of the songs are not only … Read More
Album Roundup Week: We Will Proclaim, Live Worship with The Falls Church Anglican
This week I’ll be highlighting a few albums that have come my way over the last few weeks and months. First up is We Will Proclaim: Live Worship with The Falls Church Anglican, a project overseen by my friend and fellow worship leader-blogger, Jamie Brown. This album is a true “church album”–ecclesiastical and communal from top to bottom. It runs like one, beautiful worship service. It is highly collaborative at every level. Lots of musicians and minds contributed to it, … Read More